He is college administrator; school administrator; founder … (full long bio and work).

… While well-known in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a long-time proponent of better educational opportunities for the city’s minority student population, and as a high-profile superintendent of the city’s public schools from 1991 to 1995, Fuller also has achieved national stature for his forceful and eloquent advocacy of fundamental education reform … Since 1995, Fuller has been a distinguished professor of education at Milwaukee’s Marquette University, where he also is the founder/director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning. Prior to his tenure as Milwaukee schools superintendent, he served in a number of public service positions, including director of the Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services, and dean of general education at the Milwaukee Area Technical College. He has received numerous awards and recognition over the years, including three Honorary Doctorate Degrees. When the third annual symposium for emerging black leaders convened in Milwaukee in early March this year (2001), it was attended by more than 600 educators and activists from 35 states. At the opening session on March 2, Fuller delivered a passionate speech on “The Continuing Struggle of African Americans for the Power to Make Real Educational Choices” … (full text, including an abbreviated version of his speech on the same page).

He says: … “I never realized back then, as they obviously did, the importance of having choices for my education. Today I am fighting to make sure that children from low-income and working-class families in Milwaukee, indeed all over this country, have the same opportunity. The term “choice” is often misunderstood by well-meaning people or distorted purposefully by people who want to discredit it. Choice is often equated only with vouchers. Vouchers are indeed one form of parental choice—a very important form. However, parental choice involves more than just vouchers. It means providing families with the .capacity to choose from a wide range of learning environments” … (full text, fall 2002).

He writes: … In fact, since 1965 Wisconsin taxpayers have spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help students attend private, religiously affiliated colleges. More than $100 million in taxes supports tens of thousands of children at private day care and in child development centers, many religiously affiliated. More than 100 public high school students are taking taxpayer-financed courses this year at religiously affiliated colleges and universities. They do so under a 12-year-old state program that was expanded in 1991 to include private universities. If students may use taxes to attend religiously affiliated colleges and early childhood programs, why haven’t our constitutional pillars crumbled? Because these students and their parents do so voluntarily, with no state coercion … (full text, June 12, 1998).

He writes also: … After hearing and seeing decades of philosophizing about the need to protect the traditional public school system’s funds and institutional prerogatives, and looking past the expressed concerns about a Jeffersonian separation of church and state, it is clear that the real issue in America is not choice—it is who has it! … (full text,

He says also: … “The fact of the matter is that there is research that shows that small class sizes benefit kids, and in particular they benefit kids in the early elementary school levels. The research is mixed on what is the impact overall. But intuitively, most people—and I would agree you would want children in smaller class sizes. In fact, I really think we should be talking about particularly at the high school level, smaller schools. Not just smaller class sizes. The second thing that I would argue is that if you get smaller class sizes and you have people treating kids and teaching them in the same way, the fact that the classes are smaller in and of themselves, won’t mean that kids are going to benefit. But it is true and it is important that we have smaller class sizes. The issue of sinvestment, as you call it, in public schools, is another issue. It’s an issue related to—and I happen to think that kids in poor areas don’t get the amount of money that they ought to have. But you have certain cities where you have, where you’re paying $10,000, $12,000 per student and we’re still not getting academic achievement. So for me, it is an issue of the right amount of resources. But it is also how those resources get used. And I happen to think that we ought to be able to provide policies that allow dollars to follow students and give parents options to find other schools, both public and private, that will work for their children” … (full interview text, March 12, 2004).